Because They Had to Be
by S. E. McCrory
Summary: She didn't know how she let this happen, or what they were going to do now.  But they were going to be okay.  Tag to Change in the Game.


**Notes:** Ohhhh, hello there! It's been a while, I'll admit it. I've been a little bit busy (see: outrageously busy) in the last, oh, year or so, and that has been a major contributor to my non-contributions as of late. But look! I'm back, baby!

So, the finale, guys. Now, I skipped a bit of this season because I wanted to punch my television in the face every time Hannah was on screen, but I'm that kind of girl. And if my best guy friend's girlfriend demanded I give her my sunglasses after I saved her life, there's a decent chance she would've taken a crutch to the head. But she is (thankfully) gone now, and Booth and Brennan are having a baby! Which I am so excited about people I have converted to Bones fans only have to mention their names, and right away I go, "Baby!" And I am NOT that kind of girl. Babies don't usually make me excited, they make me nervous. They're highly breakable and they can't tell me what they want. It's terrifying.

With that, I give you fic. Please read, enjoy, and then tell me what you think. :)

**Title:** Because They Had to Be

**Author:** Sophie McCrory

**Rating:** PG-13

**Spoilers:** Change in the Game

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing of value. I'm serious about that. Nothing.

**Summary:** She didn't know how she let this happen, or what they were going to do now. But they were going to be okay.

* * *

><p><strong>Because They Had to Be<strong>

It's funny, sometimes, what an educated mind can miss. When a moment comes and passes, a decision forgotten in the backs of the minds of the parties, and consequences of those actions are tossed into the breeze as though they mean nothing. Nothing could possibly go wrong, afterall.

Maybe nothing could go wrong in fairytales. But in real life, things go wrong. So, so wrong. Brennan hadn't realized what it was she'd forgotten that had caused everything to go oh so wrong until a Friday night five weeks later.

If there were no other way to describe her—and sometimes she thought maybe we should just do away with that anyway, it usually wasn't too flattering—she was always meticulous. Unlike some people, who might spend their Fridays out at a bar, or a sporting event, or a movie, or in the case of a pair of her friends, ardently sweating out the pending arrival of their first child, she spent hers updating a spreadsheet she kept on her computer to monitor her bills and expenses. Her accountant may handle the large sums of money she received as gratuity for her work on her novels, but her time with the Jeffersonian and the FBI compensated for her day to day life, and that she could handle herself.

As she was going over a list she kept of routine purchases, expertly timed so she would both never run out and never have too much in a back stocked form of excess, something jarring came to her attention. Tampons, those cottony tools that on a monthly basis become the sole source of sanity for women the world over and by absolutely no means could possibly have been skimped upon without her conscious attention, had not been in need of a refresh in supply lately. She stared at the list, thinking that she had finally found a snag in her calculations, or perhaps she had simply bought them in haste and forgot to fill the information in.

Brennan pushed herself away from the desk in her home office, padding calmly through her apartment to her bathroom. She opened a small closet between her sink and the shower, digging behind some towels to pull the bright blue and green box out into the light. She peeled back the cover and looked inside to find…a nearly full supply.

Trying not to worry, she placed the box back in the closet and walked back to her office to sit and mentally retrace her steps. She reviewed her payments for a memory that would trigger her thoughts to tell her if she was incorrectly concerned. She tried not to worry when she realized that she usually had her period when she turned in her monthly payment for her martial arts class, something she had thoughtlessly skipped out on this month under the stress of Jacob Broadsky, the death of Vincent and…the shift in her relationship with Booth.

She leaned under the desk to pull out her purse, digging into the bottom to pull out her small, black handbook. Many a modern woman would electronically track her impending activities on their smartphone, but something about the tangibility of paper and the datebook made Brennan feel more organized. There, plain for her naked eyes to see, was the red mark she placed on the anticipated date of her next period…two weeks ago.

Okay. It was going to be okay. Though they had established through the remains that she and Booth would be going undercover for the bowling tournament on Sunday, Booth had his son, Parker this weekend, so she would have no problem…checking her status without his prying eyes or obnoxious interventions. Which was good, because she didn't want to bring him into this unless she had to. They were floating in a special kind of limbo in their relationship as of that moment, were kind of together and kind of not in the sense that they couldn't seem to keep their hands to themselves and apparently had forgotten entirely how to behave normally, but had so far failed to establish verbally what they were. She wasn't going to ask for fear of his answer. If she cared to think about it, he probably felt the same way. Until this moment their definition hadn't really mattered to her, it wasn't something that she considered a pressing matter, but suddenly a part of her was simply dying to know.

She glanced sideways at the clock at the bottom of her computer screen. It was 12:40 AM on Saturday. All of the local drugstores were closed. She could get in her car and drive to some 24 hour pharmacy, but she refused to allow herself enough panic to do that. She had a brunch with Angela in a few hours; she would simply stop at the store then.

See? Nothing to worry about.

* * *

><p>"I can't believe this is happening," Angela moaned as she scooted herself into the booth she and Brennan had elected to share. Brennan looked up at her from her menu—a fruitless prop as they had decided to meet at Wong Fu's—and wondered briefly if Angela had somehow acquired a sense of clairvoyance, as she was thinking along those same lines.<p>

"I'm never having this baby," Angela clarified, as she flopped her purse down next to her and rubbed her protruding belly absently, "it has officially decided to curl up on top of my bladder and just…stay there forever."

"Eventually, Ange, your body will start to trigger the process of child birth. It's impossible for it to stay on your bladder forever anyway. Eventually you would die, and though the skeleton of the fetus would remain on top of your skeleton, over time your bladder would fully decompose," Brennan said absently, realizing that her plan to avoid thinking about her potential fetus would prove futile.

"Once again, Sweetie, your positive words never fail to encourange," Angela deadpanned as Sid approached their table.

"And what can I get you fine ladies today?" he asked, hands on his wide hips as he looked both of the women over in a way that made Brennan feel naked. If Angela felt the same, she didn't let on as she responded to the restaurant's patron with nothing but a frustrated death glare. Sid looked from her to Brennan, giving her a once over, and said simply, "Say no more."

As soon as he left, Brennan decided that if there was a time to fully broach the subject, now was it. So she tried, the universe help her, to inquire what it was like to be with child with the hopes that said friend would be too preoccupied with her own life to notice should the reasons why become obvious, "So, Ange, how are you feeling?"

Angela sighed in her frustration, "Like a beached whale. I mean, I'm ready, Bren, you know? This whole being pregnant thing has been real, now it's time to experience the next step. I'm ready to meet my child. It must be a girl, though, because she seems to have inherited my propensity for tardiness and my mother always told me I was going to be tortured one day with a daughter just like me."

"Is that what you want it to be, a girl?" Brennan asked, watching her friend closely.

"At this point, I wouldn't care if it was an elephant as long as it's out of my body."

"For a human being to carry, more or less give birth to, an elephant would be physically impossible. Your own child would tear you open and crush you to death under its weight," Brennan said, absently playing with her straw.

"Thank you, Sweetie. You never fail to remind me that speaking metaphorically is a lost cause in certain company," Angela stated flatly.

"You're welcome," Brennan said cheerily, happy to be of help. "Where you ever nervous about… you know, the pregnancy?"

Angela took a sip of her water and thought about it for a moment, "Well, each stage has its own fears, I think. I mean, first there's concern when you realize that maybe you're pregnant and oh my God are you ready for that responsibility. Then you find out you are and then that original fear gets compounded with the fact that now you have to tell Hodgins, you know? And is he going to be ready, and what is he even going to think because you haven't been married a whole year yet and you've barely ever talked about children. Then you tell him and then you realize that you have to tell everybody and then… it becomes a thing. _Then_ your body starts to change, which is always scary, and then you become physically aware of the fact that another human being is occupying your body which is both wonderful and totally disgusting and…I'm sorry, I'm rambling."

"No, no," Brennan said as Sid dropped two plates of food before them, taking extra care to give Brennan a trepidatious look before he went, "Go on, I want to know." She gave him a confused look in return instead of thanking him for his trouble.

"What's up with the sudden curiosity over all of this?" Angela inquired instead of returning to her hormonal purge of secret thoughts.

Brennan thought for a moment about her answer, unsure of how she should word what she was going to say next without lying or giving herself away, "I've always been aware of the scientific facts associated with pregnancy. A sperm meets an egg, the egg implants in the lining of the woman's uterus. The egg and sperm combined become a cell that begins to multiply over and over again until it becomes a fetus. A woman's body changes. Her gait shifts, her breasts get larger; some women experience nausea in the mornings for a time… the estrogen is just all over the place…"

"You really know how to make it sound so fluffy and beautiful," Angela said, laughing a little as she scooped up a spoonful of her soup.

"That's just it, though. That's why I'm asking. I've never looked at it as something that was fluffy and beautiful. It's all been science," Brennan said, taking a bite of her salad, "It's only been recently that I've realized that I am limited in my knowledge of what Booth might call the Unquantifiables of the Heart."

"Well, didn't you think of things like that when you were thinking of having a baby with Booth?" Angela asked, an innocent enough question on any other day.

But not today. Somehow, it was like Brennan's throat contracted on the food she'd already begun to swallow as an allergic reaction to Angela's words. She started coughing aloud as she choked, and quickly reached for her glass of water, "What?"

Angela, who was looking at her strangely said, "You know, like two and a half years ago when you randomly dropped your atomic baby bomb on him?"

Brennan gave a nervous laugh in the hopes that it came off as though she just suddenly remembered, "Oh yeah. That."

Now Angela looked worried, "Are you sure everything is okay, Sweetie?"

One of the reasons Brennan had a tendency to get defensive at the implication that she couldn't relate to people was moments like this one. You see, sometimes, she had fall backs. Like she did for years as she knew that Booth had feelings for her and she just casually went forth as though she was oblivious, even though she knew. Though she did not have one prepared for this moment, it wasn't hard to reuse a previous conversation with someone else, "Did you realize that soon, I'll be the only one in the lab without a child?"

Angela just grinned at her friend, "Hey, that's not such a bad thing. Besides, now that you're getting it on with your FBI Stud, you may not be so free for long." She gave her friend a fiendish grin, and raised her eyebrows in implication.

Brennan just laughed nervously once more, "Yeah. Maybe you're right."

Angela went back to her soup, "Of course I am. Now. I know an elephant is out of the question, but do you know of anyone who has managed to carry a baby into adulthood?"

* * *

><p>The purchase of a test was easier said than done. After the brunch she'd shared with her best friend, Brennan stopped at a drugstore that was conveniently located in a neighborhood that absolutely no one she knew lived in.<p>

As a woman who was always prepared for any situation, she'd been up for hours the night before studying over the counter pregnancy tests. As a general plan of action, she'd decided that she would simply buy a test or two in the consumer reported best brand, and if it came out positive, she would calmly request an appointment with her OBGYN on Monday. But as she found herself in the aisle, there, located between the tampons and pads and above the condoms, she found the test she was looking for.

She looked around, and grabbed one, tossing it into her basket. She turned to walk away, but some force greater than herself that she was unfamiliar with stopped her. It would be more logical, she rationalized, to purchase and use more than one. Every scientist knows, after all, that one must test a hypothesis more than once to verify the results. She sighed and grabbed two more. She tried to turn to leave again, but instead found herself essentially pushing the entire row of tests into her basket.

The teenager at the checkout looked at her funny as she began to ring up the tests. She smacked her gum as she chewed, wordlessly barcode scanning each test before dropping it into a bag, staring at her customer the entire time. Brennan, for her part, pretended to be very interested a magazine that was perched on the rack before her rather than noticing.

The cashier finished with the tests and totaled them, to which Brennan paid promptly, in cash. As she was collecting her bag, Brennan said, in much the same way she'd address one of her squinterns, "You may wish to restock your supply of this brand. You are currently sold out, and they are supposed to be the best on the market."

The teenager's eyed her skeptically, "Why'd you buy so many, then?"

Brennan, not missing a beat, said, "Mathematically speaking, the more tests that come back with the same result the less likely I am to receive an incorrect conclusion from a test that, though the best, is still flawed." And then she left.

The teenager behind the counter just shook her head. Pregnant women were crazy.

* * *

><p>Dr. Temperance Brennan liked to think of herself as a rational person. She was a scientist. She had adult, non-silly thoughts and often perfectly executed reactions to almost any pitfall in life. It was the unfortunate absence of that rationality, she decided, that had caused this mess. That was the only possible explanation for what was going on before her in that moment.<p>

She was sitting, cross-legged on the floor of her bathroom, surrounded by sheets of paper. Or more accurately, sheets of the paper she'd yanked from her printer and placed over the full-store stock of pregnancy tests she'd purchased, used, and now wasn't sure if she wanted to see the results of. She'd been waiting since well beyond the time the results should have come in. She had her hands in her lap as she tried to decide how much longer she was just going to wait until she found the answer she was terrified to know.

_Booth had his arms around her still as her sobs slowly began to subside. He intermittently switched which hands he would use to rub her back and her arm, whispering words that held absolutely no meaning and comfort more in tone than in quality. She sagged more against him, nearly spent from the energy lost in her grief, but never once did he falter in his attempts._

_The change came when he leaned down a little to drop a kiss on the top of her head. A move that, to any other couple, in any other situation would have been platonic and maybe even patronizing, caused her to still next to him. She waited a beat before she tilted her head to look up at him, only to see him peering right through her._

She leaned forward, slowly tugging back the sheet of paper, and picking the test up from the ground. She held her breath as she brought it fully within her view to inspect it properly: Positive.

_She wasn't sure what made her think that it would be okay, given the understood limbo they lived in in terms of their relationship, but she did it anyway. She leaned in to him, lingering with her lips so close to his she could almost feel their gravity, waiting for him to push her away. He didn't. She brushed her lips against his, so soft it barely happened, in a way of testing the waters. He stayed still. So she pulled up so she was level with him, and before she could really be sure of what was happening, he strung his fingers into her hair and pulled her into him, their mouths crashing together._

She moved to the next one, repeating the action. It triggered the same result. Positive.

_They pulled apart, their eyelids drooping as they simply stared at each other. Booth took a moment to brush her hair back from her face, and she just stared at him. If it weren't him, she'd know what to do next. But a part of her was waiting; waiting for him to stop them, waiting for him to bring up lines, or work, or some other good enough reason for them both to avoid going forward._

_He never did._

She sighed to herself as she pulled the paper back from the next test. Positive.

_Instead, he just stared into her eyes. There had been times, in the history of them, where he had stared at her. There had even been times when that stare had involved eye contact, maybe even reciprocation. But this time was different. This time he was looking at her like he was seeing her, really seeing her, for the first time. And she wasn't sure why, but that look made her want to kiss him again. So she did._

The next test: Positive.

_When they pulled apart, she knew he was going to try to say something before he even tried, "Bones, I—"_

_She pressed a finger to his lips to shush him. He stopped speaking instantly. He looked at her, a little puzzled. "I just have one question for you."_

_He furrowed his brows, "Mut?" he asked, her finger obscuring his pronunciation._

The next one: Positive.

"_Are you still angry?" she asked._

_It took him a moment to decide what she meant, because obviously, he was angry. Broadsky had killed a Squintern. Someone he knew had killed someone else he knew, and then evaded capture. He was pissed about that._

_But she wasn't talking about Broadsky. Or even Vincent. She wasn't talking about work, or their friends, or anything but each other. Was he still angry in his heart in the way that was impairing them from going ahead. The last road block on his part from them to go from them as partners to them as a couple. Was that anger gone? He tilted his head a little as the realization of her question dawned._

"_Mo."_

The next one was positive, too.

_She pulled her finger back from his mouth and used her hands to push herself up and swing her leg over so she was straddling his waist. He smiled and pushed her hair back from her face again, "Good." She reached under herself and pulled his sweatshirt off, throwing it on the floor beside the bed. They were doing this._

_Because after today, she was no longer impervious._

She pulled the paper back from the last one, and held it up to see that it was, also, positive. That should have been enough, for anyone who wasn't as hyper-rational as Brennan, but she would need further confirmation before she could tell Booth.

Just in time to pull her back from her increasing anxiety, her cell phone, which she had placed next to her to monitor the time, rang out to break the single-person induced tension in the room. In the hand she wasn't holding a positive pregnancy test in, she picked it up, to find the devil himself was calling her, naturally, "Hello, Booth."

"Hiya, Bones," he said, sounding significantly more cheerful than she felt. She had to remind herself that he was with Parker, something that despite the case, always put him in a happy place. The layman was easy to forget that sometimes even police officers have to leave work where it is and enjoy themselves for a time, and for Booth, that safe place was his son. Maybe he would feel that way about this baby, too. "Park and I were wondering if you'd want to come hang out with us?"

The temptation to give an excuse not to was strong, but he would see right through that and it was crucial to not raise his suspicions. "Um, yeah, sure," she said, dropping the test on the floor so she wouldn't be able to keep staring at it, "Can I call and meet up with you a little later, though? I have something I need to do, first."

"Sure thing, Bones," he chirped back to her, "Just give me a call when you're ready."

"I will, Booth," she replied, "I'll call you later."

When they hung up, she immediately dialed another number before she could talk herself out of it, "Hello, Dr. Seifert? Hi. I was wondering if I could call in that favor?"

* * *

><p>It was mid-afternoon by the time she met her old friend Brian Seifert in Urgent Care in the hospital. He did not make her wait long for his assistance, taking her into a remote exam room to help facilitate her privacy, "Tempe! It has been far too long!" he said, giving her hand a friendly shake.<p>

"It has, it has," she responded. "Look, I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to meet me here, on a Saturday…"

"Of course, it isn't a problem!" he said, his friendliness always present and infectious, "What seems to be the problem? What can I help you with?"

This was the part of this visit she knew was going to be difficult, "I believe I may be pregnant," she said, as calmly and basically as possible, "I have taken a few tests, they all came back positive, so I'm here for confirmation."

"Of course," he said, opening drawers, "just let me leave and grab a few things, and I'll be right back to draw some blood."

"Thank you," was all she said. Because _that_ was just what she needed, to be left alone with her thoughts. It was funny how, walking into the hospital that afternoon, sitting in the waiting area, she'd become more aware of the children around her. Though normally she was sure she would be aware of them in a sense, today she was watching them. Watching what they did, how they behaved, the way the adults with them reacted to their actions. Could she possibly be ready for something like that?

Sure, she got along with Parker, and though her child, like Parker, would share half of Booth's DNA, that did not mean they would have anything else in common. Though they would both hopefully have the support and influence of Booth, both the nurturing and natural functions of herself and Rebecca were vastly different. Whether it would be good different or bad different remained to be seen.

Brian returned to the room, and Brennan rolled up her sleeve without prompting once he had prepared himself so he had the access he would need to draw her blood. She looked away when he did it, a first in her life, as she usually found the blood being pulled from her body fascinating. Booth would call that creepy.

When it was over, he stashed the needle away and scurried out of the room, handing the test off to the lab to be tested. When he returned, he took a seat across from her, and did his best impression of a counselor, "Temperance, are you going to be okay?"

"Yes," she insisted, placing her hands in her lap. She laughed a little like he was being ridiculous, "Why wouldn't I be?"

"What are you planning to do if the results come back positive?" he asked, a serious expression on his face telling her that he saw right through her attempt at flippancy.

"I'm not really sure," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "this is not a situation I've been in before."

"Are you…" he paused, "are you in a relationship with the father?"

This time she laughed out loud. Was she? She wasn't sure. "Kind of," she said, "it would be Booth. Assuming there is something to have fathered, of course." It struck her as a little strange that at some point in the last decade of her life she stopped having to explain to people who Booth was, because they all already knew. "Speaking of, I have to meet him. Thank you, Brian."

"Of course, Tempe," he said, collecting his things so they could both clear the room at the same time, "I should be able to let you know in the next twelve to twenty-four hours what the results of the test are. Our lab is a little backed up today."

"Thank you, again," she said, walking out the door, "Goodbye."

* * *

><p>"Really?" Brennan asked as she stood at the top of a short set of steps, staring down upon two Booth men who looked equally excited to see her. She was standing between two ends of the counters that separate the common area of a bowling alley from the sensitive ground near to and encompassing the lanes, a little bit surprised to see the location they had picked. This was not the scene of their latest murder, and she almost never affiliated a murder scene with locations similar to it, but…she'd never really been a fan of bowling alleys. The sanitation issues alone…<p>

"Bones!" Parker shouted, jumping to his feet. It amazed her sometimes, that when her experiences with children of her partner's son's age seemed to be taking on a layer of faux-rage or pop culture misunderstanding, Parker Booth seemed to always contain an element of childish wonder that a part of her hoped he would never lose the way she and his father had.

Though that was a thought she may need to take back at the sight of the elder Booth doing a hip-shaking dance in her direction, white, laced up bowling shoes donning his feet. "You are about to witness the bowling masters, Bones," he said, doing a little shimmy as he got closer to her, apparently unable to contain his excitement, "Prepare to be amazed."

"I already am," she replied, eyeing his bowling bag, his name stitched across the top, with skepticism, "just maybe not in the way you mean."

"You will be," Booth assured, turning to his son, "Parker and I, we're the best bowling team in the east! Aren't we, bud?"

Parker took a moment to jubilantly grant his father a high-five, before he seemed to take note of their companion's rental shoes and look of disbelief before he turned to his dad, "Hey dad," he said, in a tone that instantly made Booth's face drop, "maybe you and Bones should be a team."

"What? Why?" Booth asked, looking disappointed, before he quickly turned to Brennan and added, "No offense."

Brennan shook her head to indicate that it didn't matter. Parker paused for a moment before he introduced his next idea, "It's just that… you said we were bringing Bones here so she could practice for your work thing tomorrow. She came down here in regular shoes, which is against the rules—" a fact that alarmed Brennan—"and she got _rentals_, dad. She needs your help. Us as a team beating her as bad as we would is just _mean_."

Booth smiled a little smile that he got when his little boy both amused and touched him, "That sounds like a good idea, Parks," he said, rubbing his son's head. "Hey, Bones," he added, waving her down further to take a seat and change her shoes, "why don't you change into those and you can take my ten frame?"

She did as she was told, quickly switching into her alley-issued shoes and picking up a ball. Her efforts would provide fruitless, though, when after her second try to she was able to turn around and cheer over the pin she knocked over, neither Booth nor Parker looked all that impressed. "What?" she asked.

Parker stood and brushed past her, a callous expression as his face as he picked up his neon yellow ball, "I'll show you know it's done, Bones."

Booth chuckled to himself as his son went and sent the ball down the lane, knocking roughly half of them over, before he moved to the ball return to await the return of his. Booth patted her shoulder as she took a seat next to him, grinning as he did, "Hey Bones?"

"Yes?" she said, watching Parker as his ball came back to him and he picked it up.

"Let's let me do all the bowling tomorrow," he said, laughter in his voice, "your awful bowling will give us away instantly." Parker's release of the ball down the lane was simultaneous with Brennan's elbow hitting his father's ribs. "Ow!"

"Dad! Dad! I got a spare!" Parker said, jumping down from the lane and rushing to his father, Booth, for his part, refrained from rubbing the spot his partner had assaulted and instead stood in partook in perhaps the least sportsmanlike handshake Brennan had ever seen a father and son participate in.

"Congrats, bub!" Booth said when they were done, pulling a ten dollar bill from his back pocket and handing it to Parker, "Here. Why don't you go buy us some congratulatory nachos or something. Remember Bones doesn't like meat, though, okay, buddy?"

"Sweet!" Parker cheered before snatching up the cash and bolting off.

"How do you do that?" Brennan asked in wonder as the little boy ran to a concession stand that was still within their view.

"Do what?" he asked, leaning forward to fix his shoe.

"Be such a good father," was her reply.

Booth turned and looked quizzically at her for a moment, before he straightened up. He wrapped a comfortable arm around her, pulling her into his side. He squeezed her arm a little bit as he said, "Aw, Bones, stuff like that, being a parent, it just comes to you naturally."

Though she knew he didn't know the weight of that sentence, she still stared at the outline of his jaw for a moment, the part of him that she had the best view of and thought. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps even if she didn't know what she was getting into, Booth would be enough for both of them. Maybe they would be okay. She rested her head on his shoulder as he rubbed the arm he'd been holding, watching Parker in the distance as he collected the nacho try.

They had to be okay.

* * *

><p>"Okay. You guys just stay here, and I'll go make us all some supper!" Parker declared the moment the group entered his father's apartment. Booth and Brennan came in behind him, carrying the ball bags he hadn't bothered to care about upon exiting the truck, both looking a little bit confused.<p>

"What, exactly, are you planning to make there, bub?" Booth asked, concerned. Though Parker was no longer the toddler who took Brennan in without question as if having a woman as your father's non-girlfriend-best-friend was the most natural thing in the world, he certainly wasn't old enough to be turning on the oven and making something complex with it without adult supervision.

"Don't worry, Dad," Parker said, drawing out the "a" sound to imply that he thought Booth was being ridiculous without having voiced any sort of opinion, "I'm going to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with chips and apples. I won't turn anything on, and it'll make Bones happy, because there's no meat and it's healthy." Then he disappeared into the kitchen, sliding the door closed behind him as a nonverbal means of telling them to leave him alone to practice his art.

Brennan, in a misty-eyed mood, decided not to mention to Booth that in fact, peanut butter and jelly wasn't really all that healthy. But she was touched that this little boy, whom she had for all intents and purposes watched grow into this state from babyhood, was such a good person. He even respected her dietary differences. It was so sweet.

"Bones?" Booth asked, turning to find her hand over her heart and her eyes glazed over with unshed tears, a sight that must have made him suffer a small heart attack, "Hey, Bones, you okay?"

She nodded, and swiped at her eye quickly, before she cleared her throat and said, "Yeah. I'm just impressed with what a good little boy you have."

Booth looked back at the door for a beat, and then turned his attention to her, a small smile on his face, "I know."

"You're a good father," she added.

"You said that before," he pointed out, giving her a strange look, "but thank you, again. I'm glad you think so." He walked over to his couch and dropped himself into it, resting his arm across the back and patting the seat to invite her next to him, "Is this whole Angela and her baby thing making you suddenly sympathetic to parenthood or something?"

She took the seat. "Yeah," she lied, "it's just so strange. It's like babies are everywhere." Booth not-so-subtly pushed her in closer to him, hooking his fingers around her shoulder to pull her in. She waited a moment before she took what she'd decided was a necessary step on the ladder of life changes she might need to be making in the very near future, "Booth?"

"Hmmm?" he hummed, using the remote to turn on the television and begin flipping through channels.

She took another moment to decide how she wanted to go about this, before she said, "What are we now?" in a very small voice.

He went tense as soon as the question left her mouth, his finger freezing above the remote button, leaving them on a program about a woman who was addicted to tater sauce. She cleared her throat, and he seemed to remember where he was, "I've been waiting for that question. Really," he said, returning to his clicking. "I must say, I was a little surprised that you agreed to be my girlfriend so easily for the undercover mission tomorrow. Usually you would fight me every step of the way."

Now it was Brennan's turn to hum a little, before she said, maybe a little reluctantly, "I agreed because I wasn't totally opposed to the idea."

Silence befell the room, and Booth put the remote down next to himself on the couch, "Bones," he said, laughing a little to himself at both how ridiculous and monumental what he was about to ask next was, "do you want to be my girlfriend for real?"

Mimicking her reaction from before, she pretended to fall deep into thought. Booth, noting the joke for what it was, tickled her side a little bit as she laughed and said, "Maybe I'm not entirely opposed to that idea, either."

"You know what?" Booth asked softly, his voice still playful but a little bit husky, "that's good. That's exactly what I want to hear." He put a finger below her chin, like he had when he told her that there was more than one kind of family, and turned her into him. She didn't fight him, and let him pull her closer until their lips touched softly.

The kiss was quick, however, as the sliding door to Booth's kitchen came flying back and they parted quickly with the sound, "Dinner's ready!" Parker declared, "Come and get it!"

* * *

><p>Brennan awoke the next morning to the sound of her phone. Alarmed that it may be Angela, ready to finally tell her that it was time, she shot up in the bed and nearly knocked the lamp on the side table over as she scrambled for her phone. She hadn't needed to get so frantic, however, as it was not Angela, but Dr. Seifert. "Hello?"<p>

"Good morning, Tempe," he said, his voice cheerful.

"Good morning to you, too," she said politely, her stomach becoming a tangle of knots as she waited for him to speak next.

"I have your results, I'm sorry for the wait, the lab has been insane," he apologized. Had it been for any other reason, she may have been thankful, but right now she just wished he would get to the point.

"That's okay. What do they say?"

There was a pause on the other line, followed by, "Congratulations, Tempe. You're pregnant."

Sometimes, in moments like these, a person can't hear anything, or they can only hear their heartbeat. Brennan had had a thousand thoughts in the last thirty-six hours. She wasn't the kind of person who went into a situation like this without knowing the outcome. Would Booth be happy? Would he be angry? Surely he would take responsibility for his child, but how much would having a second baby out of wedlock break him?

But she wasn't having those thoughts now. She wasn't unable to hear things, or only hear her heartbeat. Instead, all she could hear was the sound of Booth and his son, down the hall, making breakfast together and laughing. Parker was asking his dad if she was a fan of pancakes, if she'd like the ones they'd made, and he was reassuring him she would.

This baby would be a lucky kid, regardless of what his thoughts toward her would be.

"Tempe?" Dr. Seifert asked.

"Yes," she said, coughing, "yes, sorry. Thank you, I trust the next step is to set up an appointment with my O—Um, you know, doctor." It occurred to her that should Booth or Parker come bounding into the room, pancakes in a stack, she wouldn't really want to have them overhear her asking about her OBGYN. She wasn't sure what Booth would keel over dead in terror over first: the mere thought of her lady parts doctor or having to explain that to Parker.

"Yes."

"Okay, well, I will do that," she said, sitting up straighter, "thank you so much for your help."

"Of course, Tempe. Good luck," he said, and the call ended.

No sooner did she hit the End Call button, and Booth's head, hair disheveled and expression outrageously excited popped into the doorway, "Mornin' Bones! Everything okay?" he asked, casting a glance upon the phone in her hand.

Brennan looked down at the phone, the traitor that could give her all away. She looked back at him, thinking briefly that that may not be such a bad thing. She could just tell him, get it off of her chest and have it out in the open. But then she thought about the undercover mission that afternoon, and how Booth, a man who was neither rational nor exceptionally restrained in these situations, may not perform as well as he would need to to do his job. This news would have to wait for him. "Oh, yes. I was just confirming a meeting with a colleague."

Booth looked a little skeptical, "At seven AM on a Sunday?"

Brennan looked at the clock, then back at the phone, before she said, very slowly, "Yes."

Booth, in his excitement, took that as the right answer, "Well, rise and shine, Lazy Bones! Parks and I have quite the feast prepared for ya! Big day today!" Then he disappeared down the hall.

Brennan, left to her own devices, smiled a little to herself as he walked away. Booth was a good man. She was nervous beyond belief about what his reaction to her news would be, but he was a good man. She just hoped that they could survive this. Maybe today would offer her the chance to test the waters of their relationship, so to speak.

"Hey, Booth!" she said, throwing back the covers, and scampering away from the bed to the hallway, "Booth! I have a suggestion about our relationship status as an undercover couple!"

They would be okay. They would be okay, because they had to be.

* * *

><p>END.<p>

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